Code First Migrations: Your Feedback

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The information in this post is out of date.

Visit msdn.com/data/ef for the latest information on current and past releases of EF.

For Code First Migrations see https://msdn.com/data/jj591621

 

We recently released the first preview of our migrations story for Code First development; Code First Migrations August 2011 CTP. We released this preview early in the development cycle because we want your feedback so that we can use it to shape the product. We’ve received a heap of feedback and this post will summarize the feedback and how it is changing the product.

Our team is currently working on the next preview, which will include the changes discussed in this post. We want to keep the time between releases minimal and are aiming to have the new preview out soon.

The main points of feedback and resulting changes are:

  • Migration scripts should be expressed in code (not SQL): This was the most consistent and resounding bit of feedback we heard. We are working on replacing the SQL scripts with a code based alternative and this will be included in the next preview.
  • Provider model is a must: We will be including the provider model in the next preview.
  • Automatic migrations is just too much magic: The ‘August 2011 CTP’ actually included the ability to do automatic migrations, imperative migrations (similar workflow to existing solutions), or a combination of both. However, the lack of a provider model and a code based way of expressing scripts meant the imperative experience was below par compared to existing solutions. We also focused on the automatic and mixed-mode approach in our walkthrough. For the next release we will start with the imperative approach and then delve into how automatic migrations can optionally be used to avoid having large amounts of code in your project for simple changes. The existing imperative experience is described in this post.
  • Named versions are a must: The ‘August 2011 CTP’ actually included the equivalent of named versions but the above points made the mental model hard to grasp. What we were referring to as a ‘custom script’ is equivalent to a named version and future releases will support migrating up/down to any given point. For folks choosing to go with the automatic migrations you still have the option of inserting a named version at any time, this would effectively be an empty script.
  • Need a better deployment story: The ‘August 2011 CTP’ was aimed at the developer experience and didn’t include any of the work we plan to do around team build, deployment etc. We’ll put together some more details on what we plan to deliver for these scenarios and share them with you.
  • General comments about syntax/naming of powershell commands: We haven’t addressed these yet but we will be reviewing the commands before the next preview.

 

The posts that we got most of your feedback from were:

 

Please keep the feedback coming!

Rowan Miller
Program Manager
ADO.NET Entity Framework